“I sit there staring into the distance, crying, balling, gasping, and short of breath. I can’t fill my lungs. I might suffocate, and I might welcome that. I’m completely defeated. I have nothing to live for, but I lack the courage to kill myself. My father beats me whenever he is in the mood, and I’m an easy target for bullies. That’s how I was everytime I wanted to run away but didn’t have the guts or everytime I stopped eating for days but nobody even noticed or everytime he gave me a black eye. I mean, he put my sister’s head through a fucking mirror one time, and he told us that if we ever called the authorities on him, they would take us away and put us with people who would molest us. What the fuck did I know? I was just an abused child. I believed what I was told. I would rather be with someone who beats me than someone who rapes me. I wish I could go back in time. I wouldn’t love him anymore. He never really loved me anyway. I would do things much differently. I would go back to when I was a child, and I would change everything. I would take his power away, every chance I got.”

“What moment would you start at? What would you do differently?” she asked.

“I might go back to the moment when my sister called the police on him so she could get her clothes. She had moved out, and he wouldn’t let her have her own clothes. I would tell her that she is brave, and I’m proud of her, instead of being ashamed and angry that she left. I might go back to the moment when he called the police on my mom because he was annoyed with her. I had come home thinking he had killed her, seeing police cars in the driveway. The cops asked me if he ever hit us or my mom. I lied for him, even though I thought my own mother might be dead. No, I think I would go back to the time he called the police on me. He told them I was on drugs, even though he knew I wasn’t. It was one of the few times I tried to stand up for myself. The fucking floor was dirty, and I said that I didn’t do it, but I would clean it up. He wanted me to admit that it was me and clean it up. I just left, for hours and hours. He was doing that weird thing he would do when he was stressed out. He would tense up his shoulders and start pulling at the back of his pants. I didn’t want to get another beating, so I left, but I wasn’t about to admit to something I didn’t do, and that’s why he called the police on me. He wanted to make sure he always had absolute control over me. That’s the moment I would go back to. I would change everything.

“Close your eyes, breathe deeply, imagine you are there, and tell me what you see,” she instructed.

I’m on day 4 of no television. I think this is the third time in my life that I’ve seriously attempted it.

The Rules

No Netflix;

No YouTube, unless it is for instructions or work;

That’s pretty much it.

Exceptions

I can watch Netflix if I’m with people who have for whatever reason chosen to watch Netflix, and I can’t really get out of it or find anything else to do, but in good faith, I have to try to avoid those situations.

Why?

Why the hell would anyone ever want to give up TV? I had successfully given it up in the past, and the other two times I did, I wrote novellas. They were highly productive times for me. The longer I give it up the more things I’m able to achieve. I even had a budding, paid, fiction writing career.

What Happened Before?

The reasons I failed to stay away from TV in the past are pretty much the same reasons that people get back to alcohol or heroin. I just wanted to be happy again. I get out of my own head – don’t have to think, feel, and do. I can just checkout at the end of the day.

What’s different?

I guess I will find that out in the days, weeks, and months to come. I’m getting a lot more done now, and it’s only been 4 days. Let’s see what happens!

My youngest daughter is suicidal. I’m managing it well, and I think she’ll be all right, but this is easily the worst time in my entire life, likely hers too.

It makes me wonder about how I spend my time though. Is there any value in watching TV or porn or whatever other bullshit ways I spend my time? Hell no! I’ve never given up TV for more than a year, but every time I give up TV, amazing things happen in my life. I make new friends, write a book, change careers. Why am I watching TV? Why am I doing half of the stupid things I’m doing. I don’t have free time, nobody does. All you have is time and how that time is spent.

I love you youngest daughter. You know this already, and I will make significant changes in my life because of you and because of my niece who ended her life earlier this year. I want every minute of the next 40 years to mean something, and it starts right fucking now!

My only niece, who was wonderful, kind, caring, good to her family, and loved horses, took her own life recently. It’s the only death I’ve experienced that has impacted my life in a very negative way. Other people I cared about have died, but they were older, and I was prepared for it. Suicide isn’t an act of selfishness. It isn’t a crime. It’s something that happens to a desperately sad person who just can’t continue on living. They don’t understand how much everyone aches after they are gone.

To my niece, I would like to say that I love you, and I forgive you for all of the pain I feel right now. To anyone else who is contemplating suicide, you don’t know it now, but people will hurt for the rest of their lives the moment you die. The pain you feel as someone who is suicidal is the pain that people who knew you feel after you die, except it doesn’t go away for them.

The words that I write are coming from a person who has been suicidal, has had a father attempt suicide, has had a friend attempt suicide, and has had a niece kill herself. In every single case, they were sure that death is what they wanted, but after the attempt, every person, even my niece, decided they wanted to live.

In the end, everyone wants to live. That’s the strange thing about suicide. You can never be successful in completing suicide because all people truly want to live. For those who do complete suicide, they just died before they got a chance to come back from near death. My niece, in the end, wanted to live. She, like every other suicidal person I’ve known, begged for her life to be saved. She went from being sure she wanted to die to sure she wanted to live, but it was too late for her. Her family and an excellent medical team couldn’t save her life, even though they did everything right.

Her parents had recognized the signs and were doing absolutely everything they could to improve the situation. Everyone did everything they could, but in the end, it is the suicidal person who makes the decision. If anyone who is suicidal reads this, please know that there is a better way out than ending your life. Realize that, although you don’t feel it now, you do want to live.

Yesterday, I had this magically funny moment where I was with my daughter, and I was juggling three small containers of expired yogurt. One of the containers had slightly opened a bit. My daughter was nervous that the expired yogurt would open or splash everywhere if I dropped it, but we shared a moment that was fun and kind of hilarious.

Life is juggling expired yogurt. Once in a while a bit of bad will leak out. You’re definitely going to drop something every now and then and have a big mess to clean up, but if you never take chances, you’ll never have fun. You’ll never live life!

What man needs to cry? Maybe all men need to cry. I’m going through couching right now, a type of couching that looks inward. It can be a bit like therapy at times. Other times, it can look like business coaching. My coach tore open an old wound. The years of stress and unexplained anxiety that I feel everyday was washed away with sadness and tears, just like that. Instead of being stressed and a little bit angry all of the time, I’m just very sad now. Maybe I’ve always been sad. Not maybe, definitely. I’ve always been sad. At least now I can deal with that sadness, instead of the unexplained stress.

I suffered from childhood trauma, and all of my life I just seemed like I was a little bit angry and maybe a little bit dead inside. I’m just as emotional as anyone around me. I have the soul of a poet, and I’ve finally realized that while I’m rough and strong on the outside, I’m still gooey and mushy emotionally.

I know I’ll come out the other side as a better more enlightened person, but this is really fucking difficult and strange. Luckily, the sadness makes me want to write more.

At the Ottawa Writer’s Fest, I had the pleasure of hearing Cherie Dimaline speak. She restored my faith in fiction, saying that it can be transformational. I take that to mean that it really changes a person in a core way. It’s not like when you see photos of chocolate then you eat nothing but chocolate for a month. I mean, that will transform you, but not in any positive sort of way. Transformational fiction is writing that makes you think about real life situations, and sometimes you’ll want to help people or join a cause because of it.

I didn’t really think of fiction as transformational in the past. I love to write it and read it, but I often think of it as a bit of waste of time. You can write a story that parallels modern day horrors on this planet and subtly or even brutally put your readers in a scene that causes enough discomfort to spark a change in ideology or practice.

From now on, everything I write is going to start with the condition that it’s transformational, and I hope you’ll give it a try too.

Writing should be fun and inspirational, but how do you do it more often. I often think of writing like exercise:

It’s something I want to do;

It’s something I need to do;

It’s something that will benefit me;

If I build it into my routine it becomes easier;

It’s something I don’t have time for;

I just don’t feel like it right now.

Number 5 and 6 can make you go years without writing. Either you don’t have the time or just don’t feel like it. A lot of people will set about to punish themselves. In almost every case, this is a bad solution and won’t work in the long term. Sometimes punishments can masquerade as time management or self improvement. Some examples of punishment might be:

I’ll stop watching television;

I’ll spend less time hanging out with my friends;

I won’t play video games ever again.

Taking something out of your life that you enjoy isn’t a permanent solution. You might find yourself writing more, but you might also end up being more unhappy. Certainly if there are things that waste your time that you don’t enjoy, cut those out. That would be a reward, so go for it. Otherwise, think about rewards that work for you.

Once I complete my first chapter, I’m going to buy myself that new pair of shoes I’ve been wanting;

I’m going to watch an hour of television right after I write a poem;

Once I’ve completed that short story, I’m going to play video games.

For those who have very little time, keep in mind the time where you wait. Almost everyone has to wait for something at some point. You wait for the doctor, the dentist, friends, business meetings, family members, husbands, and wives. For those who take buses, trains, or planes, you can write while you’re commuting. In all of this time you spend waiting, you might be able to get a full novel complete within 2 years.

Good luck, and starting writing again. Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about your next project.